Thursday, 1 November 2012

World's largest bra auctioned for Breast Cancer Campaign
Published on 1 November 2012, by howardlake
The world's largest bra has been bought by GoldenPalace.com in an eBay auction which ended on Sunday. The 30 metre fluorescent bra, complete with Guinness World Record Certificate, from event agency chillisauce.co.uk was auctioned in aid of Breast Cancer Campaign’s 'wear it pink' event.
GoldenPalace.com have previously bought a lock of Justin Bieber's hair for $40'000, William Shatner’s kidney stone, and a grilled cheese sandwich that appeared to feature an image of the Virgin Mary for $28,000. The company's mission is to own all those things you thought money couldn't buy.
Adrian Simpson, a Director at Chillisauce.co.uk said: "we're just really happy that so much money has been raised for BCC and the fact that it’s going to a very interesting new home is a fantastic bonus for all of us who have been involved in the project for the last year."
The bra has been displayed on the ITV Southbank building, where it was revealed on This Morning by Hollyoaks actress Gemma Merna on wear it pink day, Friday 28 October.
Scaled up from an original 34B, the bra would be a 1360B.
The opening bid was £500.
Rebecca Stone, Wear It Pink senior manager, said: "The big bra is one of a kind and has helped us raise awareness of breast cancer in a bold and unique way. We’re pleased that it’s now going to a new home and are so grateful that the money raised from the sale is being donated to Breast Cancer Campaign, helping us continue to fund vital research into the disease.”
Wear It Pink is supported by Vanish, which committed to raise £250,000 for the charity this year.

Wednesday, 5 September 2012

Seven suits belonging to former British Prime
Minister Margaret Thatcher, including the one worn on the day she was confirmed
as Conservative party leader, fetched nearly ($116,000) £73,000 at a London
sale on Monday.

The jade green wool outfit worn for her Tory coronation in
February 1975 proved to be the prize lot at theChristie's auction, selling for £25,000 ($39,700) to an
anonymous bidder.

An online bidder in South Korea
snapped up the six remaining garments for £48,125.

The suits are thought
to be the first of Thatcher's clothes to be sold at a public auction.

The divisive leader's
famous handbag which struck fear into the hearts of British ministers during
the former premier's rule sold at a charity auction last year for £25,000.

Thatcher frequently
used the black Asprey bag on important occasions, such as summits with then US president
Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev during her 1979-1990
premiership.

The items formed part
of Christie's "London Sale", a unique auction held to celebrate Queen
Elizabeth II's Diamond Jubilee and the London Olympics.

Thursday, 12 July 2012

SEATTLE (Reuters) - The world's first nuclear-powered
surface warship, the USS Long Beach, was put up for auction as scrap metal on
Tuesday to be dismantled and recycled, after spending the past 17 years
mothballed in a naval shipyard in Washington state.

The 720-foot (219-metre) vessel, the first American
cruiser since the end of World War Two to be built new from the keel up,
boasted the world's highest bridge and was the last such U.S. vessel
with teakwood decks, according to Navy history.

Monday, 9 July 2012

An 18th-century letter for auction reveals how
Irish wine merchant duped British

A
letter up for auction at Sotheby's in London
shows an 18th-century Irish wine merchant duped the British authorities in DublinCastle
by giving them "vile plonk" instead of high-quality Burgundy.

The
letter, which is written by an archbishop to the secretary of a lord
lieutenant, is part of a collection of correspondence which reveals what the
British administration came up against while trying to govern Ireland.

According to theIrish Times, in the summer of 1751, Dublin
officials were preparing for the arrival from London of Lionel Cranfield
Sackville, the duke of Dorset and the newly-appointed lord lieutenant of Ireland.

The
Church of Ireland
Archbishop of Armagh, George Stone, was sent to check out the “lodgings” in DublinCastle
for the duke and the wine cellar.

Stone
arranged a wine tasting and discovered that the castle had been duped by
a dodgy merchant. The wine supplied was “a vile infamous mixture” and
“fundamentally bad." The archbishop determined that the castle had
been “scandalously abused."

Stone
described the contents of bottles “sealed with black wax, and falsely and
impudently called Vin de Beaune” as “the worst, and is, indeed, as bad as the
worst tavern could afford."

He
discovered that “the four barrels of Burgundy
are almost equally bad” and was “sure that no person will ever drink a second
glass of either”.

He
wasn't the only one who tasted the wine. He invited a select group of “eight or
nine” to the tasting which turned into a “melancholy operation."

The
archbishop wrote to the lord lieutenant’s secretary to tell “his grace” the
“disagreeable news."

He
said: “I am very apt to conclude the whole business has been dishonestly
transacted. I am confident that not a drop of the wine, so-called, was ever in
the province of Burgundy”.

The
name of the fraudulent Dublin
wine merchant who concocted the fraud was not recorded.

The
letters will be sold in an auction of rare books and manuscripts at Sotheby’s
on July 10th.

Saturday, 9 June 2012

ByAFP

LONDON

Worried about attacks from the undead? The
answer could be at hand with a 19th-century vampire-slaying kit, “almost
complete and in good condition”, about to be put up for auction in Britain.

The kit contains a mallet and stakes -- presumably for hammering into the
bloodsucker’s heart -- plus pistol, steel bullet mold, Rosary beads, an 1857
Anglican prayer book and a crucifix, Tennants Auctioneers said in a statement.

Housed in a mahogany box, the kit also contains glass bottles containing holy
water, holy earth, and garlic paste for warding off vampires, the BBC reported.

The
kit will go under the hammer in North Yorkshire in northern England on June
22, close to where Bram Stoker wrote his classic vampire novel Dracula,
published in 1897. It has already attracted international interest.

The box was left to a local woman in her uncle’s will, the BBC said.

“It’s probably a novelty thing. It’s playing to people’s superstitions,” Oonagh
Drage, of the auctioneers, told the broadcaster.

The kit also contains a handwritten extract from the Bible, quoting Luke 19:27,
the BBC said.

The quotation reads: “But those mine enemies, which would not that I should
reign over them, bring hither, and slay them before me.”

Sunday, 27 May 2012

From the Department of Ewwwwwww: Amy Winehouse
and Pete Doherty were never the best influences on each other, and
their latest and presumably final collaboration – a painting made using
their blood – has proved another disappointment, yielding only about
half the price it was expected to draw at an auction in London, The Guardian reported.
Before her death last July,
Ms. Winehouse, a soul singer who struggled with drugs and alcohol, had
had a relationship with Mr. Doherty, a fellow musician and troubled
soul. During their time together they worked on a painting called
“Ladylike,” for which Ms. Winehouse contributed a minimalist
self-portrait and which uses an artistic technique Mr. Doherty calls
“arterial splatter”: illustrations made with blood from a syringe or a
sliced-open fingertip.
Moving on: Mr. Doherty showed “Ladylike” at a February exhibition
called “On Blood: A Portrait of the Artist,” but it was not put on sale
at that time. (“Amy was on the phone to her dad when she did that,” Mr.
Doherty told The Independent of London. “She said, ‘Dad, I’m with Pete and he’s making me draw with my blood!’ He didn’t like me much, her dad.”)
More recently, “Ladylike” was put up for auction by a private seller,
along with other personal items of Mr. Doherty’s. The painting was
expected to sell for £50,000 to £80,000 (about $80,000 to $128,000) but
fetched only £35,000 (about $56,000). The Guardian said a portion of
the sale price would be donated to the Amy Winehouse Foundation.

Tuesday, 24 April 2012

The opera glasses held by Abraham Lincoln when he was assassinated 147 years ago are coming to the auction block next week.
Los Angeles-based auctioneer Nate D. Sanders estimated that they might fetch $500,000 to $700,000.

The pair of opera glasses held by Abraham Lincoln during his assassination in 1865. They are offered by online auction company Nate D. Sanders. Estimate: $500,000-$700,000.

Lincoln was fatally shot at Ford’s Theatre in Washington on April 14, 1865, while attending “Our American Cousin,” a play starring Laura Keene. During the comedy, actor and Confederate sympathizer John Wilkes Booth entered Lincoln’s box and shot him in the head.
The president’s black enameled and gold glasses were picked up on the street by Captain James M. McCamly, a Washington City Guard who was helping transport Lincoln from the theater to the Petersen House, where the president died hours later.
“You can imagine all the commotion,” said Laura Yntema, auction manager at Sanders. “They probably just fell down as he was being moved across the street to the hospital. They are very well documented. We have James McCamly’s military records and a notarized letter from the McCamly’s family as well.”

Made by German company Gebruder Strausshof Optiker Berlin, the glasses remained in McCamly’s family for three generations.

Magazine publisher Malcolm Forbes Sr. bought them in 1979. The current owner is anonymous. The glasses last came up for sale at Sotheby’s (BID) in June 2011, with the estimate of $500,000 to $700,000. There were no takers.

Tuesday, 10 April 2012

A lock of hair taken from the body of murdered Irish leader Michael Collins is to be auctioned at an historical memorabilia sale in Dublin later this month.

The Irish Times reports that other ‘macabre mementos’ of Collins’ death in Cork in 1922 will also go on sale at the Adam’s auction house.

The lock of hair and a cotton swab used to clean the Collins corpse before it lay in state are among the items up for auction.

The specialist auction house has confirmed it is to sell: “An envelope containing a lock of tangled brown hair which is inscribed Hair of head of Michael Collins when laid in State in the City Hall August 1922.”

The memento originally belonged to Collins’ sister Kitty who passed it on to a friend in the 1950s.

The auction house expects the item, now owned by an unnamed vendor, to sell for up to $7,000 later this month in a sale entitled ‘800 Years - Irish Political, Military and Literary History’.

Collins, the man who signed the Treaty of Independnce in London, was shot dead at Béal na mBláth in west Cork during the Civil War 90 years ago.

His body was brought to Dublin by sea on board the steamship Classic. It was taken to St Vincent’s Hospital to be embalmed before it was removed to lie in state at Dublin City Hall.

The paper reports that the framed swab of lint and cotton wool used to clean Collins’s face were kept by hospital nurse Nessie Rogan.

It has been passed down through her family and will be sold in an auction titled ‘Ireland’s Struggle - Irish and Republican Memorabilia’ with an estimated value of $700.

With the 90th anniversary of Collins’ death approaching there is new interest in souvenirs and mementos.

Adam’s are also offering a photograph showing Collins standing on an ironwork balcony, said to be at No. 10 Downing Street, where he negotiated the Anglo-Irish Treaty in 1921 along with a letter from a priest to Collins’s sister Celestine, a nun, describing him as ‘one of Ireland’s hidden saints’.

Sunday, 8 April 2012

LONDON (Reuters) - Samples of soil and blades of bloody grass purportedly from the spot where Indian leader Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated in 1948 will go on sale in Britain later this month and are expected to fetch 10-15,000 pounds ($16-24,000).

Mullock's auctioneer in western England said it was confident the artefacts were genuine, because they came with a letter of provenance from original owner P.P. Nambiar who collected them after the revered "Father of the Nation" was shot by a Hindu radical.

The samples also matched the account Nambiar gave of the events of 1948 in which he described finding a drop of Gandhi's blood on the grass which he collected.

"I cut the grass and also took two pinches of soil from the brink of the pothole which I wrapped in a piece of Hindi newspaper found nearby," he wrote.

Richard Westwood-Brookes, the auction house's historical documents expert, said it was often difficult to prove whether such artefacts were genuine, and his attribution of paintings to Adolf Hitler has been questioned by art experts in the past.

"In this situation I've got a letter from the guy who collected it -- P.P. Nambiar, and I've also got the pages from his book that he published in which he described collecting this soil," Westwood-Brookes told Reuters.

"So in this situation I don't think there can be any doubt."

He was also confident that a pair of spectacles made in Gloucester, also in western England, and dating from around 1891 had once belonged to the Indian independence hero.

"I did question the vendor on that very carefully, because the optician who made the spectacles came from Gloucester and you immediately think 'How can that be?'."

The steel-rimmed glasses, also valued at 10-15,000 pounds, date from the time that Gandhi was in Britain studying law.

During his stay he joined the London Vegetarian Society, through which he made friends from Gloucester, according to the auctioneer's catalogue notes.

Overall, the Gandhi collection that includes signed letters and a prayer book is expected to raise 80-100,000 pounds, although Westwood-Brookes said it was difficult to place a value on some of the more unusual lots.

"That's my honest idea about estimates," he said.

"The letters are much easier to value because there's plenty of auction records which give a good pointer as to what an important Gandhi letter is worth. But how on earth do you put an estimate on a piece of soil?"

The Gandhi collection will go under the hammer on April 17 as part of Mullock's' historical documents, autographs and ephemera auction.

Tuesday, 14 February 2012

The year of 1776 was a monumental one for both Thomas Lynch, Jr. and the United States of America. It was the birth of a nation and a life changing time for future Declaration signer, Thomas Lynch Jr.

For those who collect autographs of Declaration signers, Thomas Lynch, Jr. is the most difficult to find. In the last century, only three Lynch signed documents have been available.

Thomas Lynch, Jr. was released from the South Carolina militia so that he could replace his ailing father in the Continental Congress. For a short time, the two would become the only father-son to serve in the Continental Congress. Lynch, Sr. would be unable to sign the Declaration of Independence due to illness.

Thomas Lynch, Jr. would become the second-youngest signer of the Declaration of Independence. While Lynch's signature on the Declaration is his most famous, it is even more significant as one of 14 known documents signed by Lynch still in existence today. While most of the Declaration signers were lawyers and clerks, Lynch, a planter by trade, didn't generate much paperwork . Three years later, he and his wife would be lost at sea, thus, not many examples of his signature exist.

This extremely rare letter is the only letter, written and signed by Thomas Lynch, Jr., available to the public. Its significance is even more astounding because it includes the date of 1776 and mentions his father.

Not even Lynch's home state of South Carolina owns a Lynch autograph. The state previously owned two Lynch signatures, both on receipts, which were sold in 1929 to fund South Carolina's archives.

Lynch's autograph is more rare than that of Button Gwinnett. While many consider Gwinnett's signature to be the rarest among the 56 signers, there are, in fact, 47 known examples of Gwinnett signed letters/documents while there are only 14 of Lynch, making Lynch documents much more rare. In 2010, the erroneous belief that Gwinnett's signature is the rarest led to a Gwinnett sale at Sotheby's for $722,500. It is expected that a scarce Lynch signed letter should fetch a much higher price.

The auction for this Thomas Lynch, Jr. letter ends on February 15, 2012 at 7 pm. To view the letter, or for more information, visit www.rrauction.com .

Wednesday, 8 February 2012

(Reuters) - Bidders will be able to buy fine art, a vacation in the Maldives, or an internship with designer Donna Karan and help the planet at the same time in Christie's annual Green Auction, which is expected reap millions for environmental causes.

Proceeds from the third annual auction on April 11, which raised nearly a combined $5 million its first two years, will benefit four environmental charities -- Oceana, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Central Park Conservancy and Conservation International.

"We must all take responsibility to protect the natural world for future generations," said philanthropist and environmentalist Susan Rockefeller a co-chair of the event, adding the auction conveys a message about the relevance and necessity to conserve the planet's finite resources.

David Rockefeller, Vanity Fair Editor Graydon Carter and actress Salma Hayek are other co-chairs of the auction.

Proceeds from the event will be directed toward each organization's water-conservation projects, according to Christie's, which was set to announce the auction this week.

"Our ocean waters, which cover 70 percent of this blue planet, are hovering on the brink of an irreversible collapse, with 90 percent of the ocean's big fish gone," said Oceana CEO Andrew Sharpless.

"Luckily, history and science show us that our oceans can rebound if we put in place and enforce sensible policies," he added in a statement.

People not able to attend the invitation-only auction can bid in a concurrent online auction, which will run from March 29 to April 19. It will feature hundreds of items including art, fashion, travel and once-in-a-lifetime experiences.

In previous Green Auctions bidders have paid as much as $100,000 to spend a day with former President Bill Clinton or a trip to Hollywood to attend the Oscar parties and $26,000 for a one-hour tennis lesson with John McEnroe.

Past sales have also featured a backstage meeting with Lady Gaga and artwork by prominent contemporary artists.

Other artists and celebrities donating works of art or experiences will be announced in the coming weeks. An interactive campaign at Facebook.com/ABidtoSavetheEarth, includes a video contest and a chance to win tickets to the auction.

As in past years Christie's is waiving all fees associated with the event.

WELCOME.

WELCOME to the AUCTIONEER. Auctioneering is one of the passions of my life. I hope to post bits and pieces of interesting news on auctions and auctioneering which I come across while trawling the web, as well as my own experiences.

Please contact me if you would like a lecture or an after-dinner speech. My favourite lecture is:‘A history of auctions from Ancient Babylon to Internet Auctions’.

I am also a freelance auctioneer and ALWAYS interested in work. I have conducted over 2,000 auctions. While my speciality is in Collector's Items and Antiques, I have conducted auctions of property, cars, cattle, lettings, gold, tack, computers as well as charity auctions. Have appeared on several TV programs.